The Ministry of Health and Population Services will investigate allegations of negligence which led to the arm amputation of a nine-year-old child at Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH), Principal Secretary Dan Namarika said over the weekend.<\/p>\n
The child was pushed by his friends while watching a movie at Chilinde One on Good Friday, April 1.<\/p>\n
He sustained serious fractures to the arm and was immediately taken to KCH for medical attention.<\/p>\n
The father of the child, Yoyolani Kapingasa, said the only assistance they got from the hospital was that medical practitioners wrapped the child\u2019s hand with a bandage.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter tying his hand, they told us to go home and return on April 7 2018. They said orthopaedic surgeons were on leave and that, therefore, my child could not be assisted,\u201d Kapingasa said in an exclusive interview on the child\u2019s hospital bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, the boy was in great pain, but I relied on professional advice to go back home,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
But Kapingasa said the situation got worse and the arm started producing a bad smell. This prompted the family to take the boy back to the hospital on Wednesday, two days earlier than instructed by the medical officers.<\/p>\n
At the hospital, the family was reportedly told that the hand had rotten [gangrene] and the only solution was to amputate it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIronically, the medical officers maintained that there was no one to operate on, or amputate, the hand of my child. So, we had to wait until Friday [April 13] when they finally amputated the hand. Honestly, I can\u2019t believe it. I am very devastated because I believe this is a classic example of professional negligence,\u201d the father said.<\/p>\n
The development angered Namarika, who vowed to personally investigate the matter and ensure that those responsible account for their failures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat? I cannot believe it. Please, can you find out the identities of the child? I want to follow it [the case] up myself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Kapingasa family has since sought legal advice from human and health rights organisations to enable it get compensation from KCH.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ministry of Health and Population Services will investigate allegations of negligence which led to the arm amputation of a nine-year-old child at Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH), Principal Secretary Dan Namarika said over the weekend. The child was pushed by his friends while watching a movie at Chilinde One on Good Friday, April 1. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":63959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63960,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63947\/revisions\/63960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}